Taking Names

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Missing 'SNL'

Amy Poehler performed on Thursday night's special edition of "Saturday Night Live," but she wasn't beside Seth Meyers for their "Weekend Update" on Saturday, Associated Press reports. She gave birth to an 8-pound, 1-ounce son, Archie Arnett, hours before she was to appear on the NBC show. She is married to Will Arnett.

The mother, who also has been known for playing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, was rehearsing the show until Friday. She and baby Arnett were "healthy and resting comfortably," her publicist said.

Gallery taps curator

Mary L. Levkoff, curator of European sculpture and classical antiquities at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will become the National Gallery of Art's curator of sculpture and decorative arts in February.

She replaces Nicholas Penny, who left the museum in February to become director of the National Gallery in London.Ms. Levkoffworked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York before joining the Los Angeles County Museum, where she mostly recently organized "Hearst the Collection," an exhibition of the artworks amassed by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst.

Torn in loyalties

Ivan Fischer, the principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra until Christoph Eschenbach takes over, lost his baton during a recent performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 on the podium in Kennedy Center's Concert Hall. His only worry was that "it can be dangerous." A viola player picked up the baton and handed it over between beats as though it were the most natural gesture in the world.

Mr. Fischer is torn in his loyalties to what he calls "my baby" - the Budapest Festival Orchestra, which he nurtured and directs in his native Hungary. "I would love to do more here," he recently told a private gathering in his honor. "But I have a family and two young children who go to school in Budapest. It is impossible for them to commute."

More music

mThe sixth karaoke world championship finals were sung late Saturday in Lahti, Finland, and the winners were Michael Bates from Australia and Juliet Gonnet from France. They received a trophy, a cash prize and a chance to record and publish a single. Competitors were from Japan, China, Germany, Ghana and about 25 other countries.

mLooks like Beyonce, sounds like Beyonce, but the R&B singer has re-christened herself. From now on, call her Sasha Fierce instead, no more Beyonce Knowles. As a matter of fact, her new double album, due in stores Nov. 18, is called "I Am ... Sasha Fierce."

National treasures

Two animal sculptures that decorated the Old Summer Palace in Beijing for hundreds of years are expected to sell for up to $12 million each when the art collection of the late Yves Saint Laurent is auctioned in Paris in February.

The sculptures were stolen when French and British forces destroyed the famous complex of palaces and gardens in 1860, and Chinese cultural officials' repeated requests for their return have been rejected. "We will not purchase things that belong to us," said Niu Xianfeng, deputy director of China's Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Fund, to China Daily on Saturday.

cCompiled from wires and staff reports by Ann Geracimos and Deborah K. Dietsch